Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup

Quote of the Week:
Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts”. From: “Scandal in Bohemia” A. Conan Doyle. [H/t Jim Johnson]

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Number of the Week: 14,570

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THIS WEEK:By Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)COP-17: Early Sunday morning news reports (eastern US) state that the attendees of 17th Conference of Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reached an agreement to agree to another international agreement controlling carbon dioxide emissions by 2015 with the controls starting in 2020. The agreement angered the representatives of less developed nations who expected to start receiving massive payments from more industrialized nations for past and future carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, they retain hope for such payments as a separate agreement was concluded to fund a guide for such payments in the future.

Given that carbon dioxide is essential for green plants and most other forms of life, and that enhanced atmospheric carbon dioxide is a boon to agriculture, perhaps the lesser developed nations should be paying the industrial nations for the service they are providing rather than trying to extort money from the service providers when they are receiving the service.
No doubt the agreement is welcome news to the oligarchy (borrowing a term from Roger Pielke, Sr.) that controls the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which attempt to prove, unsuccessfully, that carbon dioxide emissions are the principal cause of global warming. Now that global warming is no longer occurring the term has morphed into climate change. How increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide causes a cooling is still a mystery.
The agreement to agree gives hope to the bureaucrats of the UN who desperately desire an independent source of funds for which they are not accountable. International bureaucrats believe it is simply not dignified to be forced to justify expenditures to political bodies such as Congress, which are accountable to the public they represent.
The agreement gives hope to promoters of unreliable and expensive wind and solar generated electricity. As the subsidies in the US are reaching termination, the promoters will no doubt argue that their inferior products are needed in the future when controls of carbon dioxide emissions may or may not be subject to international control.
Citizens of the West should be thankful for the representatives from China and India who are very concerned about the economic future of their citizens and insisted on vague terms in the enforceability of any agreements. Clearly, they are more responsive to the needs of their citizens than representatives of many developed nations, such as, those of the European Union. Please see Article # 1 and links under COP-17.
****************Argumentum ad hominem: No international conference of global warming advocates, such as COP-17, is complete without personal attacks on global warming skeptics who Senator Barbara Boxer declared endanger humanity. Often the work of the skeptics is labeled as “cherry-picking” or “disinformation” without specifics and even though such activities frequently appear in the work of the global warming oligarchy.
Emphasizing facts that contradict sweeping generalizations is not cherry-picking. Tim Ball gives a classic example of cherry-picking by Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in an effort to defend his revision of the text of the IPCC Second Assessment Report (AR-2) after peer review to include the claim that global climate is being influenced by humans. Subsequently, Nature magazine published an article by Santer with a graph indicating increasing atmospheric temperatures. However, the graph only showed a segment of the atmospheric data and when all the data was included there was no indication of increasing temperatures.
Students of propaganda recognize that disinformation comes from a Russian term describing the activities of Soviet agents in spreading intentionally misleading information. It is also called black propaganda. Michael Mann’s hockey-stick, so prominent in the Summary for Policymakers of the Third Assessment Report (AR-3) of the IPCC, can be so identified. What was not clear at the time was that tree-ring proxy data for temperatures were clipped when they were joined with instrument data. As revealed in the Climategate emails, ably presented by Steve McIntyre, the proxy data diverge from the instrument data, thus making the tree-ring data unsuitable as a proxy for instrument data.
Interestingly, in his defense of the hockey-stick at the fall conference of the American Geophysical Society (AGU) Mann continued a program of disinformation. His abstract states: I attempt to use the Hockey Stick to cut through the fog of disinformation that has been generated by the campaign to deny the reality of climate change. This clearly misstates the position of most global warming skeptics who recognize that climate change is normal and natural. Please see links to comments by Tim Ball and Judith Curry under “Climategate Continued,” and “Seeking a Common Ground.”
****************AGU: Roger Pielke Sr. points out that, at the fall conference under its new leadership, the AGU is apparently politicizing science.
Also, Pielke has a link to a conference in India that included global warming skeptics. Please see links under “Defending the Orthodoxy,” and “Questioning the Orthodoxy.”
****************FERC: The mission statement of the US Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) declares: “Mission: Reliable, Efficient and Sustainable Energy for Customers. Assist consumers in obtaining reliable, efficient and sustainable energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means.” FERC has apparently abandoned this mission in favor of expensive, unreliable electricity from wind power. It ordered the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), in the Pacific Northwest, to take power from wind farms even though BPA has an excess of reliable hydroelectric power at far lower costs to its customers.
FERC is also ignoring its responsibilities of protecting regional grids from possible disruption and power outages that may come about as EPA regulations force the shut-down of coal fired power plants. Giving some cover to the irresponsibility of FERC, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued a study that can be politely described as a “puff-piece.” It looked at the issue of grid reliability from the standpoint of the nation as a whole rather than by the various regions. That is, a shortage of electricity in the Southeast can be counter-balanced by an excess in the Pacific Northwest – as if the transmission of this electricity over some 2500 miles using power lines that do not exist is not an issue. Under questioning by members of Congress, a DOE official admitted that a more detailed study is needed. Please see Article # 4 and links under “EPA and other Regulators on the March”
****************Number of the Week: 14,570. According to an estimate by Willis Eschenbach posted on the Anthony Watts web site, that is the number of attendees at COP-17. Approximately 40% represented nongovernment organizations (NGOs), mostly environmental groups, not counting the environmentalists included as government representatives. Please see the link under “Environmental Industry.”

We, the people of the industrious nations ( I prefare this decriptor than the established one of ‘industrialised nations’ for the simple fact that the progress we ahve made during the past mellenia is not due to someone else industrialising us, but because we have been industrious and ingenious ourselves, while other nations kept on wanting to live in the stone age) are wrong to expect the lazy nations to pay us for the CO2 increase in the atmosphere that has resulted in more food production. This for the simple scientific fact (Henry’s law) that the CO2 increase is not of anthropogenic origin but natural origin, a consequence of the CO2 release from the warming oceans following the LIA. Likewise the lazy nations cannot expect any trillions of dollars/euros from the industrious nations for the negative effects of global warming, (which is not happening) due to CO2 increase since this increase is only natural.
What the lazy nations shoukd do is start working hard like our forefathers and mothers did so that we have the standard of living that we enjoy today. The lazy nations have a head start. They know exactly what to do for them to become rich, since all they have to do is emulate us and our forefathers. Our ancestors did not have this head start, they learned by trial and error. But finally we got here and it’s good. We don’t owe the lazy ones anything.

Stew Green (@stewgreendotcom) says:
December 12, 2011 at 12:59 pm
– Would be great if someone can tell us how much it cost us taxpayers to send all the hangers on and activists to Durban
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Stew,
I had commented in WUWT in previous posts, as follows: 15,000 delegates, spending approx $10,000 each for flights. hotels, food, taxis, allowances ( in COP15 at Copenhage they were aslo offerred free services by the local prostitutes). The total cost according to my assumption would be $150 million.
$150,000,000 is my answer to your question.
How much children would have been saved from death due to famune, desease, slavery overwork and dangerous child labour if at least part of that money was donated directly to the poor of the planet.

Green$$peace and the NGOs have no downside, nor do the 70 states who are members of either the Less Developed Countries bloc or the Alliance of Small Island States. How do you expect them to answer when asked if they’d like to receive money ?